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How White People Perceive The Purpose Of Diversity

Submitted by BlogEditor on Thu, 03/01/2018 - 19:49

The purpose of diversity can seem different for different people. At the SPSP 2018 Annual Convention Justice and Morality Pre-conference, Dr. Stacey Sinclair from Princeton explored the motives underlying diversity in “Why Diversify: Framing Diversity as a Moral Versus Instrumental Good.”

How people frame the benefits of diversity, according to Dr. Sinclair, can be more moral–motivated by fairness and justice–or more instrumental—motivated by usefulness, like broadening horizons.

One context in which these framings are reflected is messaging in the diversity statements issued by Universities. Dr. Sinclair manipulated this messaging to investigate White people’s preferences for moral or instrumental framing. White people reported liking the University with instrumental messaging more, thought they would gain more value from attending, and were more likely to want to attend. Moreover, when forced to choose between Universities with instrumental or moral framing, three quarters preferred the instrumental framing.

Other analyses revealed some of the assumptions potentially underlying these preferences.

In both framings, people assumed that “diversity” referred primarily to Black people. In the instrumental framing, people assumed that “diversity” referred a little more to White and a little less to Black people, implying that White people might feel more personally included in instrumental framings. Consistent with this idea, White people reported thinking they had more to contribute in the instrumental framing.

Dr. Sinclair plans to investigate minority groups’ attitudes toward different framings as part of her next stage of research.

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Character & Context is the blog of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). With more than 7,500 members, SPSP is the largest organization of social psychologists and personality psychologists in the world.